Marriott International’s year-end revenue-per-available-room growth forecast outside of the U.S. was lowered from the 6% to 8% range to the 5% to 7% range, according to a report from HotelNewsNow.com’s Jason Q. Freed.
Marriott is also seeing delays in its pipeline in China, where Sorenson said a "government-encouraged slowdown" is taking place. About a dozen projects under development in China have halted construction."
“In Europe, Q3 RevPAR will be helped by the Olympics,” Marriott’s president and CEO Arne Sorenson said during a conference call with analysts Thursday. “At same time, a weak economy is creating headwinds.”
And in more earnings news, The Rezidor Hotel Group said RevPAR increased by 5.9% during the second quarter, thanks largely to strong performance in emerging markets.
The company opened 1,300 rooms during the quarter and has a “strong and steady” pipeline of 22,000 rooms.
However, the company cautioned that its outlook “remains very uncertain” because of the unstable macroeconomic situation.
Online booking is gaining traction in Eastern Europe, according to a PhoCusWright report.
During 2011, 16% of Eastern Europe’s total travel was booked online. That number is expected to increase to 23% by 2013. Leading the growth will be Russia, where online penetration will increase to 18% by 2013 from 10% in 2011, according to PhoCusWright.
“Russia's online travel growth has lagged due to the vast size of the country's unwired, rural areas, as well as consumers' distrust of banks and charge cards," Lorraine Sileo, VP of research, said in a news release. "But change is coming fast, and Russia's online emergence signals a major shift in how travel is sold in the region."
Chinese hotel companies are suffering from the economic slowdown in that country, Bloomberg reports.
The Bloomberg China-US Equity Index of the most traded Chinese shares in New York lost 1.6%, the lowest level since 5 October. China Lodging Group Limited and 7 Days Group Holdings Limited dropped by more than 6%. A government report due Friday is expected to show China’s economy expanded 7.7% in the second quarter, the slowest pace in three years, according to the median estimate of 35 economists surveyed by Bloomberg.
“Investors are so worried about the risks that it’s turned off institutional investors completely,” Wells Fargo & Company Analyst Trace Urdan said. “I have no reason to believe there’s falsification here.”
Though most bank ratings are stable, FitchRatings reports that 21.5% of global bank ratings during the second quarter are on “Negative Outlook/Watch” up from 18.8% during the first quarter.
Of the downgrades, 60% occurred in developed markets, including 18 banks in Spain. In the meantime, negative ratings in emerging markets grew to 13.6% during the quarter, up from 8.9% during the first quarter.
In some good news for the banking industry, the total number of downgrades continued to decline, falling to 45 during the second quarter from 57 during the previous quarter. And the total number of upgrades doubled to 16 from eight.
Compiled by Shawn A. Turner.
